Get A Palm Beach Condo For $37K Cash

Financing for Florida
condos is so tight, that you can pick one up for a song
if you've got cash laying around. FBR analyst Paul Miller
recently took a tour of the South Florida property market, just
to get a ground-level view of the carnage. His account is
fascinating. Among the problems: If a condo project has a 15% or
more delinquency rate, Fannie and Freddie won't finance any
purchases at the building:

This limits the sale of units to only cash buyers and puts
further pressure on prices throughout the complex. One condo unit in a condo conversion
project in West Palm Beach was just sold for $37,000 in cash,
down from a $247,000 purchase price back in February 2007. This
particular condo building had over one-third of association fees
delinquent. What about the new Administration's
pledge of $50 billion to help distressed homeowners? One realtor
stated that roughly 90% of the foreclosed homes in the West Palm
Beach area were investor-related properties, and once home prices
dropped significantly, investors walked away from their homes.
The Mortgage Bankers Association has estimated that 70% of all
foreclosures are unavoidable. Therefore, we believe the new
Administration's $50 billion foreclosure prevention programs will
have very little impact on stabilizing the housing market, not
stopping the wave of foreclosures that are plaguing the Florida
housing market.

Don't take this as advice or anything, but we're almost tempted
to go down and pick up a condo at these prices. Seriously. For
all its faults, Florida will always be warm, right? It's always
going to have that going for it.